Buy an arm roast at the grocery store the night before, sleep.
Wake up, dump in arm roast, a can of french onion soup, top off with water or beef stock
Cover and set to Low, then go to work for the day
Return home in the evening, shred meat with some forks, serve on buns with cheese of your choice
It’s not glamorous, and you could do a lot better with more intelligent ingredient choice and more prep (searing the roast first, adding veg, doing the broth from scratch, etc). But the result-to-effort ratio of the bare minimum is unmatched if you’re ever in a “fuck it, guyslop night” kinda mood.
For slightly more effort, I sometimes make a very simple hot apple cider recipe. That’s non-alcoholic for all the non-Americans, though you can always spike it with your spirit of choice:
For every 8 cups (~1.8L, 2L is probably fine) of apple juice from concentrate, add:
1 tsp whole cloves
1 tsp whole allspice
2 cinnamon sticks
1/3 cup packed (~70g) light brown sugar
1 large orange, sliced
Cook on low for 2 hours, fish out solids, serve hot.
If you can specifically find “honeycrisp” apple cider at the grocery store to use as your base, it’s even better. I can sometimes find it seasonally at Walmart.
One thing I love about owning an automatic pressure cooker is that the days of forgetting to prepare a meal before I leave for work are long gone. No need to slow cook, when you can have the most tender, delicious meat in under an hour. Most meats take 20 minutes. It’s healthier too because the faster cooking retains nutrients. And more flavorful because the pressure helps your sauce/seasonings infuse within the muscle fibers.
I think I’d keep using the slow cooker in that situation, because 100% of slow cooker time is parallelized with work time. Even if the pressure cooker is fast, it can’t compete with zero.
Though, having the pressure cooker available for when I’m a brainless oaf who didn’t start the slow cooker in the morning sounds like a great fallback option.
I think slowcookers in general avoid reaching boiling temps because the whole point is being able to leave them run unattended for hours, which you can’t safely do if it’s boiling off.
My best guess for a potential solution if you’re gung-ho to try and find a way is to pour the juice into a saucepan and bring it to a boil separately, let it cool, then prepare as directed. But I have no idea what that will do to this compound she is allergic to, whether boiling water is sufficiently hot to do that, how long you need to hold it there to make it safe, or what else boiling it will do to the flavor. I also have no idea what the nature of the allergic reaction is and how much risk it puts her in. So for lawyer reasons I can’t in good faith reccommend you make this for her at all.
If you have actual medical advice telling you what temp denatures the bad compound and how long it needs to be held there to make it safe, try leaving water sit in your slow cooker with an accurate thermometer and see for yourself if it gets to that temp. If you can confirm that, then it might be safe.
Experiment with it at your own risk with her consent, I guess.
Zero-effort french dip:
It’s not glamorous, and you could do a lot better with more intelligent ingredient choice and more prep (searing the roast first, adding veg, doing the broth from scratch, etc). But the result-to-effort ratio of the bare minimum is unmatched if you’re ever in a “fuck it, guyslop night” kinda mood.
For slightly more effort, I sometimes make a very simple hot apple cider recipe. That’s non-alcoholic for all the non-Americans, though you can always spike it with your spirit of choice:
For every 8 cups (~1.8L, 2L is probably fine) of apple juice from concentrate, add:
Cook on low for 2 hours, fish out solids, serve hot.
If you can specifically find “honeycrisp” apple cider at the grocery store to use as your base, it’s even better. I can sometimes find it seasonally at Walmart.
One thing I love about owning an automatic pressure cooker is that the days of forgetting to prepare a meal before I leave for work are long gone. No need to slow cook, when you can have the most tender, delicious meat in under an hour. Most meats take 20 minutes. It’s healthier too because the faster cooking retains nutrients. And more flavorful because the pressure helps your sauce/seasonings infuse within the muscle fibers.
No kitchen should go without.
I think I’d keep using the slow cooker in that situation, because 100% of slow cooker time is parallelized with work time. Even if the pressure cooker is fast, it can’t compete with zero.
Though, having the pressure cooker available for when I’m a brainless oaf who didn’t start the slow cooker in the morning sounds like a great fallback option.
Does the cider ever reach boiling point in the crockpot?
My wife loves apples, but there’s a compound in them she’s allergic to. Cooking them denatures the compound and makes them safe.
Not on low, no. I make no promises about high.
I think slowcookers in general avoid reaching boiling temps because the whole point is being able to leave them run unattended for hours, which you can’t safely do if it’s boiling off.
My best guess for a potential solution if you’re gung-ho to try and find a way is to pour the juice into a saucepan and bring it to a boil separately, let it cool, then prepare as directed. But I have no idea what that will do to this compound she is allergic to, whether boiling water is sufficiently hot to do that, how long you need to hold it there to make it safe, or what else boiling it will do to the flavor. I also have no idea what the nature of the allergic reaction is and how much risk it puts her in. So for lawyer reasons I can’t in good faith reccommend you make this for her at all.
If you have actual medical advice telling you what temp denatures the bad compound and how long it needs to be held there to make it safe, try leaving water sit in your slow cooker with an accurate thermometer and see for yourself if it gets to that temp. If you can confirm that, then it might be safe.
Experiment with it at your own risk with her consent, I guess.